Versus / Fall 2012 RTW

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Sometimes the narrative playing in your head during a show bears little to no resemblance to what unfolded in the mind of a designer while they were working on it. That’s why God gave us backstage access, so those responsible for creating the clothes get the chance to reveal the inner workings of what really went into a collection. A good case in point would be Versus, designed by the considerably talented young Scot Christopher Kane, who followed up a stellar London showing of his own label with a collection for this offshoot of the house of Versace only a few days later. So, Christopher . . . “It’s totally Camden cyberdog,” Kane said. “The skinheads, the glitter, the acid tie-dye . . . It starts off angry, then gets more laid-back. But really, in the end, it’s about making everything graphic.” That, as much, was obvious from the get-go, even if Kane’s take on that curious techno/hippie-rock look peculiar to that district in north London wasn’t in any way writ large. But then, that’s the thing with him; like all those blessed with an original way of thinking, you can’t always immediately decipher their sources of inspiration at first glance.

Ostensibly, then, Kane seemed to be working in that somewhat medieval/gothic vibe updated for the Rooney Mara generation that Milan has fallen for in a major way, except, like he said, he suddenly blew in some air to lighten the proceedings as the show wound its way to its end. It opened, however, with a series of looks in the by-now-ubiquitous claret: a coat with black leather sleeves and circular black leather patch pockets over a high-necked sweater (the throat, and how it is covered or accentuated, is constantly in focus in Milan); a slim, monastic jacket with a rounded volume in the sleeves over leather leggings; and an abbreviated flared dress, its laced sides and shoulders tautly exposing a flash of skin.

Then the show progressed into a petrol-blue archival Versace print that looked like a morphing of a Jacobean floral with a rather geometric paisley, worked into short flared and pleated dresses worn over thigh-high boots, or as slouchy but slim pants worn with a gleaming black leather cropped jacket and razor-slashed tees over the likes of black lace. That became a recurrent thread, this layering of print and lace and color—beautiful, intense color; violet, citrine, turquoise—with tiny dresses that flared out, or were fluid and diaphanous, almost like lingerie, or were as tight as they were tiny. Those particular ones were part of another narrative too, though. They called to mind the grommet-and-lace fluorescent look that started it all off for Kane a few years back, when sharing a finale bow with Donatella Versace could have only been a dream.